If you are reading this, it is likely you already understand the SEO utility of frequently posting blog articles on your businesses’ website. It’s a great way to show Google that you’re actively engaged with your customers and your industry, making you more authoritative and giving you a better chance of ranking high in relevant search results.

However, many businesses treat their blog as an afterthought, not really spending a lot of effort on them or posting regurgitated, uninspired content. While having a blog at all is better than nothing in terms of SEO, it can do a lot more for your search ranking if you put more effort into it.

Let’s take a look at 3 tips you can use to enhance the SEO performance of your business blog.

1: Write about what your audience is searching for

The first thing you should be doing when preparing your business blog is to write about topics that your target audience cares about and, by extension, are searching for. For example, if you’re business sells pet food, then a suitable topic might be “the best frequency to feed your kitten” or “the best food for different sized dogs”.

By doing this, you’re not only writing about topics that are being searched for, you’re also accomplishing the basic advertising goal of associating your product with the core desires of your target audience. People buy pet food not just because it’s a necessity, but because they really care about their animal and its well-being, so writing about topics that explore the ‘best’ way to care for their pets is going to be beneficial for a business selling pet food.

All of this work overlaps and helps boost the authority of your business online. Google loves to reward businesses that appear to be giving out free, helpful information to their customers about things they care about.

2. Use keywords in the optimal places

While writing about relevant, engaging topics is most important, it never hurts to specifically target a set of keywords relevant to your business. Using the pet food example again; let’s say you wrote about “the best frequency to feed you kitten”, then it would be good SEO for you to include “kitten food” or “cat food” strategically throughout your article.

The best places to include keywords are in your articles title, in headings and subheadings, in your opening paragraph, in your concluding paragraph and in the meta tags of any images you are using. All of this works to boost the relevancy of your blog post for keywords your business is targeting.

In this way, blog posts are a great way to include more keywords on your website outside of landing pages.

As always; remember not to keyword stuff. When you use so many keywords that your writing appears unnatural, it turns off readers and also puts your website at risk of being penalised by Google.

3: Use images, videos and infographics to break up the reading

One big mistake many business blogs make is failing to include images, videos, infographics and other bits of media to break up the monotony of the reading. Simply having a big block of text without anything to colour it and peak the reader’s interest isn’t going to attract readers, or the attention of Google.

Remember, Google wants to serve its users with content that’s not only informational, but highly engaging. At the very least, your business blog MUST include a featured image that is relevant to the subject matter.

It’s even better when the article’s subheadings are supported by relevant images. Infographics are another great way of conveying information in an engaging way.

And remember; use relevant keywords in the meta tags of the media you choose to include.

As our marketing manager, James takes on the responsibility of overseeing the creation of original, persuasive and high quality content that is an integral part of how we achieve success for our clients. Through his experience working in the SEO field, James has developed a robust understanding of core digital marketing principles and has a particular interest in the growing importance of sincere and engaging content in world where issues like ‘fake news’ have become a major talking point.